No, the White House didn’t ‘dissolve’ the Pandemic Response Office. I was there

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I suspected as much, there is just so much bullshit and propaganda posted on here. Try and refute this if you can!

Tim Morrison is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former senior director for counterproliferation and biodefense on the National Security Council.

President Trump gets his share of criticism — some warranted, much not. But recently the president’s critics have chosen curious ground to question his response to the coronavirus outbreak since it began spreading from Wuhan, China, in December.

It has been alleged by multiple officials of the Obama administration, including in The Post, that the president and his then-national security adviser, John Bolton, “dissolved the office” at the White House in charge of pandemic preparedness. Because I led the very directorate assigned that mission, the counterproliferation and biodefense office, for a year and then handed it off to another official who still holds the post, I know the charge is specious.

Now, I’m not naive. This is Washington. It’s an election year. Officials out of power want back into power after November. But the middle of a worldwide health emergency is not the time to be making tendentious accusations.

When I joined the National Security Council staff in 2018, I inherited a strong and skilled staff in the counterproliferation and biodefense directorate. This team of national experts together drafted the National Biodefense Strategy of 2018 and an accompanying national security presidential memorandum to implement it; an executive order to modernize influenza vaccines; and coordinated the United States’ response to the Ebola epidemic in Congo, which was ultimately defeated in 2020.

It is true that the Trump administration has seen fit to shrink the NSC staff. But the bloat that occurred under the previous administration clearly needed a correction. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, congressional oversight committees and members of the Obama administration itself all agreed the NSC was too large and too operationally focused (a departure from its traditional role coordinating executive branch activity). As The Post reported in 2015, from the Clinton administration to the Obama administration’s second term, the NSC’s staff “had quadrupled in size, to nearly 400 people.” That is why Trump began streamlining the NSC staff in 2017.

One such move at the NSC was to create the counterproliferation and biodefense directorate, which was the result of consolidating three directorates into one, given the obvious overlap between arms control and nonproliferation, weapons of mass destruction terrorism, and global health and biodefense. It is this reorganization that critics have misconstrued or intentionally misrepresented. If anything, the combined directorate was stronger because related expertise could be commingled.

The reduction of force in the NSC has continued since I departed the White House. But it has left the biodefense staff unaffected — perhaps a recognition of the importance of that mission to the president, who, after all, in 2018 issued a presidential memorandum to finally create real accountability in the federal government’s expansive biodefense system.

The NSC is really the only place in government where there is a staff that ensures the commander in chief gets all the options he needs to make a decision, and then makes sure that decision is actually implemented. I worry that further reductions at the NSC could impair its capabilities, but the current staffing level is fully up to the job.

You might ask: Why does all this matter? Won’t it just be a historical footnote? It matters because when people play politics in the middle of a crisis, we are all less safe. We are less safe because public servants are distracted when they are dragged into politics. We’re less safe because the American people have been recklessly scared into doubting the competence of their government to help keep them safe, secure and healthy.

And we’re less safe because when we’re focused on political gamesmanship, we’re not paying enough attention to the real issues. For example, we should be united behind ensuring that, in a future congressional appropriations package, U.S. companies are encouraged to return to our shores from China the production of everything from medical face masks and personal protective equipment to vitamin C and penicillin.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...sponse-office/

[Stretch]

"And we’re less safe because when we’re focused on political gamesmanship, we’re not paying enough attention to the real issues. For example, we should be united behind ensuring that, in a future congressional appropriations package, U.S. companies are encouraged to return to our shores from China the production of everything from medical face masks and personal protective equipment to vitamin C and penicillin."

Sounds like a plan. I just hope to heaven that all that returned cargo gets inspected and disinfected before opening it all up over here. I don't
trust the Beijing Bros...not even a little bit. No sir.

[cancel2 2022]

I suspected as much, there is just so much bullshit and propaganda posted on here. Try and refute this if you can!



https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...sponse-office/

Kartoon Kenny doesn't like the truth and that's a fact!

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Where are all those bullshitters that spread misinformation, you know who you are? Calling on Jacqui, CINNAcal BARstard, Loony Central, Jarhead et al.

[Taichiliberal]

And yet the former director of the office says something else:

Former Director of White House Pandemic Office Says Disbanding Unit Left U.S. 'Less Prepared' for COVID-19 in Op-Ed



https://www.newsweek.com/former-head...losure-1492337

[anatta]

It is true that the Trump administration has seen fit to shrink the NSC staff. But the bloat that occurred under the previous administration clearly needed a correction. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, congressional oversight committees and members of the Obama administration itself all agreed the NSC was too large and too operationally focused (a departure from its traditional role coordinating executive branch activity). As The Post reported in 2015, from the Clinton administration to the Obama administration’s second term, the NSC’s staff “had quadrupled in size, to nearly 400 people.” That is why Trump began streamlining the NSC staff in 2017.

One such move at the NSC was to create the counterproliferation and biodefense directorate, which was the result of consolidating three directorates into one, given the obvious overlap between arms control and nonproliferation, weapons of mass destruction terrorism, and global health and biodefense. It is this reorganization that critics have misconstrued or intentionally misrepresented. If anything, the combined directorate was stronger because related expertise could be commingled.

The reduction of force in the NSC has continued since I departed the White House. But it has left the biodefense staff unaffected —

[cancel2 2022]

It is true that the Trump administration has seen fit to shrink the NSC staff. But the bloat that occurred under the previous administration clearly needed a correction. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, congressional oversight committees and members of the Obama administration itself all agreed the NSC was too large and too operationally focused (a departure from its traditional role coordinating executive branch activity). As The Post reported in 2015, from the Clinton administration to the Obama administration’s second term, the NSC’s staff “had quadrupled in size, to nearly 400 people.” That is why Trump began streamlining the NSC staff in 2017.

One such move at the NSC was to create the counterproliferation and biodefense directorate, which was the result of consolidating three directorates into one, given the obvious overlap between arms control and nonproliferation, weapons of mass destruction terrorism, and global health and biodefense. It is this reorganization that critics have misconstrued or intentionally misrepresented. If anything, the combined directorate was stronger because related expertise could be commingled.

The reduction of force in the NSC has continued since I departed the White House. But it has left the biodefense staff unaffected —

This is just one more example of the bullshit that passes for news, I bet it choked WaPo staff having to print that!!

[cancel2 2022]

And yet the former director of the office says something else:

Former Director of White House Pandemic Office Says Disbanding Unit Left U.S. 'Less Prepared' for COVID-19 in Op-Ed



https://www.newsweek.com/former-head...losure-1492337

Looks like sour grapes to me!

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The usual suspects have all gone quiet!

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The usual suspects have all gone quiet!

Jarhead is still perpetuating the lie, if he's awake then he's lying.

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Jarhead is still perpetuating the lie, if he's awake then he's lying.

He's really getting off on this, truly odious excuse for a man.

[Taichiliberal]

Originally Posted by Taichiliberal
And yet the former director of the office says something else:

Former Director of White House Pandemic Office Says Disbanding Unit Left U.S. 'Less Prepared' for COVID-19 in Op-Ed



https://www.newsweek.com/former-head...losure-1492337

Looks like sour grapes to me!

Actually, it IS a direct refutation of the assertion of your OP source, straight from the horses mouth (so to speak).

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Actually, it IS a direct refutation of the assertion of your OP source, straight from the horses mouth (so to speak).

Pretty much everything you say comes straight out of the horse's arse. The woman who wrote that lost her job as part of the reorganisation, not surprising that she'd write that sour grapes article.

Tim Morrison was the director for counterproliferation and biodefense on the NSC in the Trump White House before joining the Hudson Institute as a senior fellow. In a Washington Post op-ed, Morrison explains that part of that reorganization included the consolidation of three overlapping directorates including arms control and nonproliferation, weapons of mass destruction terrorism, and global health and biodefense into one arm of the NSC. Together they created the office that Morrison would lead starting in 2018.

“It is this reorganization that critics have misconstrued or intentionally misrepresented,” Morrison wrote in the Washington Post.

“The reduction of force in the NSC has continued since I departed the White House. But it has left the biodefense staff unaffected – perhaps a recognition of the importance of that mission to the president, who, after all, in 2018 issued a presidential memorandum to finally create real accountability in the federal government’s expansive biodefense system.”

https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/17...n-biodefenses/

[Grokmaster]

I suspected as much, there is just so much bullshit and propaganda posted on here. Try and refute this if you can!



https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...sponse-office/

MORE LEFT LIES EXPOSED.

DO THE FAKE NEWS/LYING LEFT EVER TELL THE TRUTH ANYMORE???

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MORE LEFT LIES EXPOSED.

DO THE FAKE NEWS/LYING LEFT EVER TELL THE TRUTH ANYMORE???

Apparently not, very few seem to care about the truth these days!